Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday July 08, 2014 @01:30PM
from the for-all-your-helicopter-racing-needs dept.

Zothecula writes: As one of the contenders in the race to win a $100 billion contract from the U.S. government for the next generation of attack helicopter in the Army's Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) program, AVX Aircraft Company has conceived a futuristic machine kitted out with coaxial rotors, ducted fans and a retractable undercarriage that could hit speeds of over 270 mph (435 km/h).

One hundred *billion* dollars? Enough to buy about 5000 Apache attack helicopters (I would not like to be on the wrong end of those). Why do I think this program will end up with a tiny, tiny fraction of that?

Are you sure you read the comment correctly? (Am I?) I believe he was saying that the $100b will buy a tiny fraction of the 5000 helicopters that could be purchased if they spent it on the existing platform, not that the cost will be a tiny fraction of the budget.

Have you tried?If a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII can tow a caravan (S2E6) [wikipedia.org] then why wouldn't a Bugatty be able to be fitted with a hitch?Okay, it won't reach 400 km/h while dragging a boat. It would surprise me if it reached 250 km/h with what once was a boat.

This might be an interesting concept, a combined land/water speed record where the land speed is made with the boat trailered, then the boat's speed on water is added to that, of course the boat would have to be launched from the trailer and tow vehicle. That would be right up Top Gear's alley.

Why do I think this program will end up with a tiny, tiny fraction of that?

Why would you not think that $100b will be just a tiny fraction of the real final cost? What was the last completed military development project that came in at a tiny fraction of the original budgeted cost?

There were a number of things developed during our recent middle eastern wars that were done efficiently and at low cost. UAVs advanced rapidly, as did APCs and armor technology. Peace time weapon development is very expensive; the people setting the requirements get to indulge every fantasy, the R&D people explore every facet and the politicians milk it all for support.

The alternative is to be empty handed when the barbarians appear at the gate. F-22s may be token aircraft in our inventory, but we k

One hundred *billion* dollars? Enough to buy about 5000 Apache attack helicopters (I would not like to be on the wrong end of those). Why do I think this program will end up with a tiny, tiny fraction of that?

I think the dead give-away is when somebody quotes a nice even number - $100B - how convenient!

If people are going to make up numbers and hope that they will be believed, then at least make an effort and select something that looks like a "real" number, even if it vastly inflated to suit your argument. Quite frankly, it's depressing how people nowadays are too lazy to even lie properly.

The Comanche program was cancelled after only $7B was spent in development, and before they started mass production. Is $7B a lot of money? Yes. But it's not $100B.

True. I'm thinking the $100B is the budget over a number of years, not a huge up-front payment. And so, when it's canceled later and we decided to upgrade the Apache again, we probably will have wasted some subset of that.

I wasn't trying to imply that we'd pop that much cash, but that we sorta have a record of starting programs for new aircraft only to cancel them after a few billion and go back to something already in the field.

Well, give them a little credit. The Joint Strike Fighter according to the last review had exceeded its cost estimates by more than 50%, so they're only more than ~$300 Billion over budget, oh except for the fact that they're producing less than a quarter of the originally projected 1,591 aircraft (365 per 2012 plans), the aircraft won't use more than 30% common parts between the models (was supposed to be 70%), the VTOL version is still cracking its frame and the carrier landing hook still has to be redes

One hundred *billion* dollars? Enough to buy about 5000 Apache attack helicopters (I would not like to be on the wrong end of those). Why do I think this program will end up with a tiny, tiny fraction of that?

Actually, only about 2500 at the current (FY2014) fly-away price ($35 million) of a new build current model (AH-64E).

The Army doesn't want Apaches. They want a medium lift technology demonstrator that will replace their Blackhawk fleet while providing much more capability by exploring new vertical lift technologies. Then they'll run separate competitions to scale the technology up and down in size to replace their Apaches, Little Birds, and Chinooks.

Large hybrid titling ducted rotor quadcopters with electric drives and inboard turbine generators. Don't they already make model aircraft that look much like that and perform pretty well. Just need to up scale it. Now if they want to save money, which really doesn't seem to be the objective. They need to separate out the airframe from everything else. Don't design a military aircraft, design an agile high speed civilian aircraft capable of carrying the final design load, of personnel, munitions and armour.

More importantly, a pair of counter-rotating rotors gets around the pesky roll issue caused by rotor stall on the retreating side at high speed. The rotor may still stall, but it doesn't matter nearly as much since you're still balanced.

While a simpler and more conservative design, a helicopter like this already exists: The Eurocopter (now Airbus) X3.

Not yet in production but several functioning machines that already reached speeds of 472 km/h.Of course this is a civillian design, not military, and has far less transport capacity, but the technology is working already. This is beyond prototype stage and ramped up for commercial prodcution right now.

Eurocopter also planned to compete in the FVL program, but since the US would have claimed IP in this case, a civilian production would not have been possible without paying licence fees to the US (despite the US not contributing any development ressources or IP).

It's more like the Sikorsky X2 [wikipedia.org]. The dual rotors are an important feature; With a single rotor as you increase forward speed you lose lift on one side of the rotor as it slower relative airspeed, until it's basically going backwards. Having contra-rotating rotors means that one side will always have blades going "forwards" regardless of airspeed.

retreating blade stall is less of any issue on compound helicopters if they include a wing. the wing can push that barrier back further, and even offload the rotor entirely of lift responsibility. even the stub wings on the Cobra and Apache provide a measurable amount of offload. not a whole lot, but some.

The nice thing about dual-prop compound helicopter is instead of using a tail rotor to coutneract torque, one of the propellers basically takes its place, providing the same counter force (one will provide

If anyone remembers the last few years of development for the RAH-66 Comanche and how it had to be scrapped due to compartmentalized co-development of the different systems jacking up the cost to astronomical levels for one unit just from inefficiency. It was a great stealth escort weapons platform - shelved and set the US fixed wing aircraft scene back years. I hope this one can cut it in a modern battlespace scenario.

The V-22 Osprey [wikipedia.org] performs a similar role for the Navy/Marine Corps. Why develop a new platform that will cost billions of dollars and many years of research and testing? The V-22 can be adapted to this new role much faster and for a lot less.

Well, it is SUPPOSED to cost half as much as an Osprey, but we know how that goes (cough, F-22, F-35). There will be a long development period first; plenty of time for things to go wrong. Or we could - wait for it - 1443 Ospreys right now with no development wait and risk for $100 billion ($69.3 million flyaway cost per Osprey as of FY 2012).

No way in hell will this thing have more range than an Osprey, and "agility" is unquantified feel-good. And the Osprey's real speed is faster than even the claimed spe

Agreed the V-2 Osprey is faster max 316 mph and they would overlap quite a bit. The niche this could possibly fill would be as a replacement for a stealth black-hawk. Hopefully more maneuverable than the osprey in hover mode and much faster than the blackhawk's top horizontal speed.

Because nothing says less crashes like creating something completely new and untested than something that has crashed in the past but had the causes for the crash ironed out?

Aircraft crash anyway, there was a US harrier crash a month or two back and that aircraft was fighting in the Falklands in 82. If a platform that mature still has the odd issue then what makes you think a brand new untested platform is magically not going to crash?

If you take the V-22, and remove the Marine Corps' requirements for blade-fold-wing-stow and rotors small enough to launch off of a Marine helicopter ship, you free up a huge amount of design room to increase performance.

Bell Helicopter's entry into this competition is more of an incremental upgrade to their V-22 tiltrotor technology: http://bellv280.com/ [bellv280.com] The Army also wants something smaller than the V-22 (the V280 will end up being probably 1/3 to 1/2 the size) and it will presumably be correspondingly cheaper per aircraft. (Of course with the way these programs usually turn out, w

higher reliability, lower (or at least different) mechanical complexity.there are also various operational issues with the V22.

for one thing, its big. both in size and weight it is MUCH bigger and heavier than the CH46's it's replacing. The result is on board ship they can only carry 6 of them per embarked squadron, as opposed to the normal 8 of the 46's.

It's much more mechanically complex (engines rotate, the wing and rotors fold for storage), leading to additional maintenance time required.

Not! This is a figment in AVX's collective mind. The real helicopter doesn't move at all except for CGI on a computer monitor. Not to say they couldn't build it but a bit premature to say much about it. "It could reach speeds of a billion light-years per fortnight." Hey, maybe it'll do the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.